Board votes 8-1 to close Edgewood over parents' protests

By
Evan Brandt, The Mercury

Saturday, February 18, 2012

POTTSTOWN — Facing a decision Superintendent Reed Lindley described as “gut wrenching,” the school board voted 8-1 Thursday night to close and explore the sale or lease of Edgewood Elementary School, to redistrict attendance areas in the borough accordingly, and to move the fifth grade into the middle school.

School board member Valerie Harris cast the sole vote against the motion, which was made at the beginning of the meeting, but was not voted on until almost three hours later.

In between, a line of parents, residents and students spoke out against the move, saying it is wrong for their children and wrong for the taxpayers.

“I would not have moved into this district if I was not going to send my children to Edgewood,” Katrina Blakey-Bearden, wearing a red shirt worn by Edgewood parents as a sign of solidarity, told the board.

“I understand you’re thinking about closing Edgewood school, I wish you wouldn’t. We’re a family,” said third grader Nicole Rubach. “I do not want to go to another school for fourth and fifth grade.”

The directive to move all Pottstown fifth grade students into Pottstown Middle School will not occur prior to the 2013-14 school year in order to give the administration time to plan for the transition.

That element of the plan also drew criticism.

“Haven’t you people ever heard of sex, drugs and rock and roll?” warned Taylor Strickle. “It all starts in middle school.”

“I am still for five schools and I am so against putting the fifth graders in the middle school,” said former board member Julia Wilson. “But if it allows us to keep five schools, I say do it.”

But even moving the fifth grade, which was almost as unpopular with the school board as with the parents, would not save enough space or money to keep all five schools, the board said.

“I don’t have a speech repaired, I’m speaking from my heart,” said parent Mary Anne Baker. “I’m asking each and every one of you, don’t look at the numbers. Look at our children and our future.”

Board members said funding considerations left them little choice.

“I’ve fought to keep all five schools, but I’m realistic too,” said Board Vice President Robert Hartman Jr., who made the motion on which the board voted.

“It does come down to money, and if we keep five buildings, what will happen, as budgets get tighter and tighter, is we will have to start cutting programs,” he said.

Currently, the district has submitted plans for a $21 million project that would renovate all five elementary schools with enough energy savings and state reimbursement that the local cost would be about $11 million.

However, that project does not create enough space to eliminate the modular classrooms and also relies on the now-questionable state reimbursement to make it affordable to local taxpayers.

The board had been poised last week to alter that proposal to close Edgewood and add enough additional classrooms to Rupert, Lincoln and Franklin elementary schools to allow for the elimination of the modular classrooms and to keep fifth grade in the elementary buildings.

The plan had also called for the administration to be moved into the middle school and high school, allowing for the closure of the building at Beech and Penn streets, the old Washington School.

But all that was before Gov. Tom Corbett released a budget proposal last week that, among other things, calls for a freeze on all funding for the reimbursement program, called PlanCon, while it is studied for a year.

That revelation forced the administration to withdraw its previous recommendation and to recommend the course of action undertaken by the board Thursday.

The motion the board approved does leave some wiggle room, by instructing the administration to begin the project at Barth Elementary School, which had no new classrooms added under any of the dozens of scenarios considered by the board.

That would give the district a year’s worth of breathing room to see if the state’s “study” of the PlanCon reimbursement program resulted in state money again being available for the work at Franklin, Lincoln and Rupert elementary schools.

But hopes are not high.“You know Governor Corbett’s not going to change his plan. You know what we’re getting this year, you know what we’re possibly getting next year,” said Industrial Avenue resident and parent Ray Blakey, who also said he wants to keep all five schools. “We’re going to have to face facts, we’re not going to get a lot of help out of Harrisburg.”

Should his prediction prove correct and the state money not reappear, the renovation projects the district undertakes will leave in place the modular classrooms that now grace each elementary school campus.

For resident Kay Groff, those modulars, which she called “dilapidated shacks,” are a problem.

Meeting with a Realtor while trying to sell her mother’s Franklin Street home, Groff said “the real estate agent told me the schools are a disincentive for buying in this town. To be specific, she said it is the modulars lined up on the elementary playgrounds that turn people off. Those buildings scream ‘failed school board.’”

Edgewood parent Kizmet Washington was among several parents who warned that if Edgewood is closed, they will pull their children from the school system and enroll them in charter schools, costing the district more money.

“So you’re going to sell a 40-year-old school to keep and repair an 80-year-old school, I don’t get it,” said Blakey-Bearden.

Hartman said he made the motion to close Edgewood, even though the price to renovate Rupert is about $1 million higher, because multi-storied buildings are more energy efficient, and thus cheaper to run, and because Edgewood is a more attractive property to sell, perhaps further helping to cut the cost.

But when Harris mentioned talk of selling the property to The Hill School, School Board President Judy Zahora cut her off and said “there has been no discussion with The Hill about selling Edgewood,” she said.

What there was plenty of discussion of Thursday night, was how voters have repeatedly called for maintaining five elementary schools.

“We voted for the five elementary schools, time and time again,” said parent Jeannie Howard of Sunset Drive.

“I’m struggling to pay my taxes, I get that,” she said. “But I would much rather go out to work, part-time full-time, even take on a second job, if it meant that my daughter could remain at her neighborhood school.”

The board was not thrilled about their choice either.

“This is like choosing the best of the worst,” said board member Mary-Beth Lydon.